Who says the rich inevitably get richer and the poor poorer with globalisation? The most egalitarian cities are located in rich Western Europe though booming Beijing has the lowest income gap in the world. Look at the State of the World's Cities 2008/2009 — Harmonious Cities report released by UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, yesterday.
The report says Beijing's Gini coefficient — a measure of income gap — is the lowest in the world (0.22), while Hong Kong's (0.53) is the highest of all Asian cities.
The report says Asian cities with a Gini coefficient of 0.39 — just below the 0.4 unacceptable level — are the most equal in the developing world — that is, compared with cities in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
The income gap is increasing in Singapore, according to the official Statistics Singapore:
"The Gini coefficient, which is a summary measure of income inequality, increased from 0.472 in 2006 to 0.485 in 2007."
That means Singapore has a greater income gap than Britain and America, which have Gini coefficients of 0.35 and 0.45 respectively, leave alone Scandinavia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Austria and the Netherlands.
The UN Habitat report says:
In other words, welfare states can reduce economic disparity. In America, Barack Obama spoke of the need to "spread the wealth around" in his famous encounter with Joe the Plumber. The UN Habitat report says:
The report says though US cities have relatively lower levels of poverty than many other cities in the developed world, their levels of income inequality are quite high, and have risen above the international alert line of 0.4. According to the report, in Canada and the United States, one of the most important factors determining levels of inequality is race.
The report also says:
- More than 70 per cent of the populations of Europe, North America and Latin America are already urban.
- Asia is urbanising rapidly, with approximately 40 per cent of its inhabitants now living in cities.
- Many cities in China are growing at staggeringly high growth rates of more than 10 per cent per year, including Chongqing, Xiamen and Shenzhen.
- Asian cities are the most affected by population decline; they account for 60 per cent of all shrinking cities in the developing world. Most of these cities are in China; Indian cities account for approximately 20 per cent. In China, urban contraction concerns intermediate and big cities, and in India, it occurs mostly in small urban centres.
- Globally, 143 cities experienced the loss of 13 million people from 1990 to 2000. More than half of this population loss (6.8 million people) occurred in Chinese cities, while roughly 16 per cent (2.1 million people) of the population loss occurred in other Asian countries.
- China shows one of the world's highest income gaps between urban and rural areas mainly due to economic liberalisation and concentration of economic activities in urban areas, says the report. Inequalities in Asian countries – measured by income or consumption indexes– are generally higher in urban than in rural areas, with the exception of China, which is the only country in the region with higher Gini coefficients in the countryside than in urban areas.
- India also shows a growing income gap for the same reason, says the report: In 2002, the income gain of the richest 10 percent of the population was four times higher than the gain of the poorest 10 percent.
- Malaysia is the only country in the Asia where levels of inequality are more or less equal in urban and rural areas. Perhaps, that is due to government policy though the report does not say so.
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